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Tuesday, December 18

The Ghosts In My House

In my medieval thriller The Fifth Knight, there’s a plot development that relies on a minor
character. That character is a Jewish moneylender in the North Yorkshire town
of Knaresborough. Knaresborough is where the historical record tells us that
the knights fled after murdering the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket. I
knew that there was a thriving Jewish community in the medieval city of nearby York, but in the course of my
research, I was pleased to find evidence of a (much smaller) community in
Knaresborough. The town’s Civic Society have even erected a plaque near the
site of the 13th century synagogue.

Giving my minor Jewish character the occupation of
moneylender was deliberate (as it was necessary to the plot) and not
stereotypical in the context of the time period. There was substantial economic
growth in the 12th and 13th centuries. The literate,
educated Jewish communities that had previously been heavily reliant on trade
began to be excluded from mainstream commerce. Many shifted to money lending as
an alternative. Under the law of the Christian church, loaning money for profit
was forbidden. But it was not forbidden under Judaic law. Crucially, money was
transportable, as these centuries also saw repeated mass expulsions of Jews
across Europe.

In 1290, King Edward I ordered the expulsion of all Jews
from England, confiscating (of course) all their wealth into the bargain. It
would be another 350 years before Jews were re-admitted and before communities
began to re-establish themselves. In my adopted home city of Manchester,
settlement began in 1780 and had grown steadily ever since, with the largest
Jewish population in the UK outside London. The house we live in was built
nearly a hundred years ago, but we are the first non-Jewish family to live in
it.

So it was without surprise that I answered a knock at our
front door one day to see an unknown middle-aged man and woman standing there.
We hadn’t owned our house long at the time, and people called to ask about previous
occupants. (Representatives from the synagogues also called frequently, until I
clocked that I been airheaded enough to leave the mezuzah on the front door
post. I returned it to them with profuse apologies).

But my latest visitors asked me some strange questions. ‘How
old was our house?’, ‘When was it built?’, ‘Did I know the names of people
who’d lived there before?’ I must have looked suitably bewildered, until the
woman said, ‘I’m terribly sorry to bother you with all this. But you see, I was
adopted, and my mother was a maid in this house.’ They were invited right in
and the woman (whom I will call Alison) told me her story.

Her mother, Elizabeth, was a maid living with and working
for, the Jewish family who owned our house at the time. Elizabeth was an Irish
Catholic (same as me).

But Elizabeth got pregnant.
Age forty, to an itinerant Irish labourer, who disappeared with all haste. This
was 1947, where there was only one option for Elizabeth, pregnant and
unmarried, according to the Catholic system of the time. When her baby was due,
she was sent to a local convent to have it. Baby Alison arrived and Elizabeth
had her precious daughter for a week. Then she was called to the parlour by one of the nuns,
where a strange family waited. Heartbreakingly, Elizabeth had to hand her baby
over to them immediately, knowing she’d never see her, hold her, touch her, kiss
her -ever again.

Alison had a very happy life. Her adoptive family were
loving and very comfortably off and she wanted for nothing. She married
happily, but often wondered about her real mother. When she turned fifty, she decided
to do something about it. A long, long search led her to rural Ireland.
Elizabeth would have been in her nineties by then, so Alison figured she
wouldn’t be alive. But she was. The search had almost dried up, but a chance
encounter at a hospital, with someone else sharing Elizabeth’s surname, led
Alison to her.

Elizabeth was alive, with eight siblings: uncles and
aunts for Alison and a raft of cousins. And not one of them knew of Alison’s
existence. Elizabeth had kept her heartbroken silence for over fifty years. She
told Alison that having her taken from her arms was the worst moment of her
life, and that she thought of her every day, wondering if she was all right.
She also told Alison all about the Jewish family in Manchester. How they had
been so kind when she confessed to her pregnancy, how they had kept her job
open for her. She returned to live with them for many years after, until she
returned to Ireland as an elderly woman. This was not a typical reaction in the
world of the time. Uneducated Irish maids were two a penny. An illegitimate pregnancy was usually
grounds for instant, unreferenced dismissal. And this was 1947, where the
devastating horror of the Holocaust was still a living nightmare for Jewish
families and communities everywhere. Yet they showed her absolute compassion
and understanding and did the best they could for her.

Elizabeth
died soon after being reunited with her daughter.

What could I do, except show Alison round our house. Many
adaptations have been made since the time her mother lived there. The original
back door to the kitchen has been bricked up, but this was where Elizabeth
would have gone in and out, answering to tradesmen and delivery boys. Some of
the original windows were still there. Alison put a hand to one, and said: ‘My
mother would have cleaned these when she was carrying me.’ We went upstairs to
the small front bedroom, which we guessed would have been Elizabeth’s, now our
baby daughter’s. On a shelf was a little statue of Our Lady, given to us by a
family friend.

Shortly after her visit, Alison sent me a lovely thank
you note and a copy of a beautiful photograph. Her and Elizabeth, both smiling
with an absolute, undiluted joy. As ghosts go, I’m very happy to share with
Elizabeth - and her Jewish protectors.

Note: The Fifth Knight can be found on
Kindle Serials at The Fifth Knight. At this time, only
US customers can purchase the serialized format. The book will be released in
complete format by Thomas & Mercer in 2013.

Sir Benedict Palmer returns to Germany on November 1 2016!

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About Me

E.M. Powell’s medieval thrillers THE FIFTH KNIGHT and THE BLOOD OF THE FIFTH KNIGHT have been #1 Amazon bestsellers and a Bild bestseller in Germany. Book #3 in the series, THE LORD OF IRELAND, was published by Thomas & Mercer on April 5 2016. Born and raised in the Republic of Ireland into the family of Michael Collins (the legendary revolutionary and founder of the Irish Free State), she now lives in northwest England with her husband, daughter and a Facebook-friendly dog. She is also a contributing editor to International Thriller Writers The Big Thrill magazine, blogs for English Historical Fiction Authors, reviews fiction & non-fiction for the Historical Novel Society and is part of the HNS Social Media Team. Find out more by visiting www.empowell.com.